A SECOND VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICABY SIR CHARLES LYELL

LOWELL 1849

Note:Charles Lyell was a geologist in England who resolved to make a journey
to America to study the terrain of the new country. His trip in the years
1841-2 encompassed Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Washington, Virginia,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Rhode
Island, Vermont, Kentucky, Illinois, Ohio, and Nova Scotia. Lyell published
several papers on the scientific discoveries he made while in America,
but in 1849 he also published A Second Visit to the United States of
North America, a more general account of his impressions of American
society.

Lyell's observations about American women excluded the comments about
society gatherings so prevalent from other travelers, among them Tocqueville
and Beaumont. Lyell noted approvingly the deference shown to female travelers
on the railway and on the steamboats, but most of his remarks about American
women concerned their work in Lowell in the mills and their work for religious
charities. Lyell also included detailed information about slave provisions,
slave prices, and a slave wedding.

EXCERPT – CHAPTER VI

I was informed by a fellow-traveler that the joint-stock companies of
Lowell have a capital of more than two millions sterling invested.
"Such corporations," he said, "are too aristocratic for our ideas, and
can combine to keep down the price of wages." But one of the managers,
in reply, assured me that the competition of rival factories is great,
and the work-people pass freely from one company to another, being only
required to sign an agreement to give a fortnight's notice to quit. He
also maintained that, on the contrary, they are truly democratic institutions,
the shares being as low as 500 dollars, and often held by the operatives,
as some of them were by his own domestic servants. By this system the work-people
are prevented from looking on the master manufacturers as belonging to
a distinct class, having different interests from their own. The holders
of small shares have all the advantages of partners, but are not answerable
for the debts of the establishment beyond their deposits. They can examine
all the accounts annually, when there is a public statement of their affairs.

An English overseer told me that he and other foremen were receiving
here, and in other New England mills, two dollars and two and a half dollars
a day (8s. 6d. and 10s. 6d.).